I liked this one despite some early concerns about where the film was going early on and a finale that I saw coming some way off.

The two leads, Raido and Alaoui were terrific and it will be interesting to see what the director does next.

Spoiler:

I'd be interested to see what your views are on the ending - the director seemed to imply Alaoui''s character was dead or disabled at the end, but I didn't come to that conclusion based on what I thought I saw, but maybe I missed some clues?

I thought this was generally good, but it had it's problems. Initially the film implied there was something supernatural going on with flickering lights, and shadowy figures that we the audience saw but Alaoui apparently did not. That didn't seem to pay off in any way, and was in fact just misdirection that was dropped later on.

I thought the performances were great all round, but think the ending would have been better if:

Spoiler:

She hadn't randomly killed everyone in the house with her never endingly loaded shotgun, it went a bit far. I think it would have been a more satisfying ending if she'd killed Dougie/her father who totally deserved it, and then John had talked her down from killing him as he'd changed his mind about wanting to die.

The film's biggest strength by far was the interaction between the two lead actors, the way they conveyed the subleties of their characters' relationship. It can't have been easy to create a character like John, who was basically obnoxious most of the time but still remained sympathetic.

Having said that, I think John's traumas were more convincingly portrayed than Evie's. The horror-movie feel of her flashbacks and waking nightmares was out of place.

I was sat there thinking OK, this is good human-interest drama but something needs to happen... unfortunately when it does, it's too over the top. I think they had a basic story which could be approached either as serious drama or out-and-out horror, and they got stuck somewhere in the middle so, good though it is, it doesn't quite work.

I disagree with Alan Jones about the film's title. I can't remember the original, but much wordier, title, but at least it was unique. There are dozens of films called "Broken" and unfortunately that title choice will help to drag it into obscurity.

Good performances, but this was slow and boring to me. Initially the controlled depressing tone got to me and I was prepared for something really awful to start happening. When the film seemed to imply supernatural visions I thought they might be going for some sort of body swap narrative where Alaoui would be trapped inside the rock star's body and start being abused. Instead it just continued in a downbeat way until it suddenly ended in a bloodbath in a manner which I didn't find convincing.

The Soapmaker wrote:I disagree with Alan Jones about the film's title. I can't remember the original, but much wordier, title, but at least it was unique. There are dozens of films called "Broken" and unfortunately that title choice will help to drag it into obscurity.

It was originally called The Myth of Hopelessness, which sounds like more of a title for a work of modern art. Broken is far too generic and I always think it's a turn-off to give a movie a negative title that could be subconciously applied to the film. Just a slight modification to something like Broken Spines or The Hopeless Ones would have preserved the meaning but made it more appealing.